Jan 02,2008 00:00 by
UPI KHARTOUM, Sudan -- A U.S. diplomat was killed as he returned from a New Year's Eve party in the Sudanese capital of Khartoum in an attack that also left his driver dead.

The Sudanese government said John Granville, 33, was near his home when 17 shots were fired from another car, The New York Times reported. Granville was on his way home from the British Embassy.

Walter Braunohler, a spokesman for the U.S. Embassy in Khartoum, said Granville died at a hospital a few hours after he was wounded.

While Braunohler said it was too early to say whether Granville was killed by terrorists, Sudanese officials described the attack as well-planned. Officials said another car blocked Granville's and two men got out, one firing at the diplomat and the other at his driver, identified as Abdel Rahman Abbas, a Sudanese employee of the U.S. embassy.

Relatives said Granville first went to Africa as a Peace Corps volunteer in Cameroon and also had received a Fulbright fellowship. He then went to work for the U.S. Agency for International Development, first in Kenya and later in Sudan.